China Tells

The ongoing Greek debt crisis seems remotely linked to China’s economy. People would be surprised to see any serious contagion of Greek debt crisis to China’s banking sector. On the other hand, the argument goes that the Greek debt crisis delays the pace of RMB revaluation, as RMB has actually already appreciated against Euro from about 10.2 to 8.5 since December (an appreciation of 16%, See chart above). It is argued that RMB revaluation is a multi-lateral and long term process as a part of global rebalancing (See Article from Michael Pettis HERE). Given the weaker Euro outlook, the surplus economies in Europe is likely to benefit by gaining more trade surplus (eg., Germany). A byproduct of such transition would be that either the European peripheral economies (eg., Portugal) would gain more deficit (which is unlikely given their weaker currency and fiscal consolidation plan) or the world’s other surplus countries would have to reduce their current account surplus (eg., China and Japan). It looks like China and Japan might be the loser in this game.

欧元汇率在最近4个月发生了很大波动，主要源于希腊的债务危机。关于希腊债务危机对于中国的影响，众说纷纭，各有见解。最普遍的意见是中国银行在希腊放债量微不足道，因此不会受什么影响。对于人民币汇率，也有论调认为由于欧元对于人民币大幅贬值，因此人民币升值步伐将被放缓，主要原因是由于欧元的贬值，人民币的升值过程已经被动完成了。基本上看来，由于欧元的贬值，德国和北欧出口型国家将受益，而中国和日本的出口将受到影响。